We received a lot of questions this week about what it’s going to take to get through this challenging moment and build a new future. Here is a sample of what’s been on your mind:
The gerrymandering is terrifying. Is there ANY way to avoid or undo it? I see Republicans as much more effectively strategic than Democrats.
(Matt) I’m actually going to write about this tomorrow in the next installment of my series on revitalizing democracy. Republicans have ignited a redistricting war that has the potential to spread beyond Texas and California to other states where there is one-party control of the redistricting process. It’s a race to the bottom prompted by Trump’s well-founded fear of losing the House next year. That should tell you a lot. Congressional Republicans are afraid. They’ve been enabling an unpopular administration and passing legislation that people find abhorrent, and they are in trouble. Because Trump cheats his way through life, and because Republicans have sacrificed their belief in democracy to enable him, they’re willing to change the rules to claim an advantage.
Now look at how Democrats have responded. The Texas power grab seems to have ignited a fire under them. Everyone from congressional leaders to key state officials are on board with a tit-for-tat escalation despite widely holding the (correct) belief that redistricting should be a non-partisan enterprise. Gavin Newsom has been especially strong on this point, and his state of California stands to deliver the biggest blow by neutralizing the districts Trump is looking to create in Texas. This should be a welcome development for anyone who feels the party has been too passive in the face of Trump’s assault on democracy.
And I wouldn’t be terrified of the gerrymander. If Republicans are successful in Texas, Democrats have a good chance of countering in California, to say nothing of the lawsuits that will keep the Texas map tied up in court for a long time. But the thing to keep in mind is that Democrats are heading for victory in 2026, and in a wave year, they should be able to win far more seats than Republicans can steal.
I'd love to see a discussion of the possibility of a government shutdown in the fall. Can the Republicans just do what they did before and circumvent the filibuster? And how bad do you think it would look for Democrats to push it to a shutdown if the Republicans refuse to compromise?
(Chris) A government shutdown after September 30, when current funding for the government runs out, is a real possibility.
All government funding bills, outside of budget reconciliation bills (which follow the lengthy and tortuous process used to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), are subject to the 60 vote threshold in the Senate. So, in order to pass additional government funding, Republicans need everyone in their Senate caucus, plus at least seven Senate Democrats or independents, to vote with them to pass more funding. Because of the huge blowup over nine Democrats voting with Republicans to keep the government open back in March, Senate Democrats are spending a lot of time in internal discussions (see here and here) to develop a common strategy for September, so as to avoid a second rift this time around.
The two specific issues that are making congressional Democrats so angry—and thus reluctant to join what is usually a bipartisan process—are the threat of future rescission bills from the Trump administration and how the Trump administration froze hundreds of billions of dollars in funding that was approved by Congress and signed into law. They believe—rightly, in my view—that these actions make it impossible to strike any deal with Trump, because he could just freeze money both sides agreed to or axe it through a rescissions package later on. The question is whether shutting down the government over this would be an even worse result, which is admittedly a difficult question to answer because it is a hypothetical.
I am personally on the fence. The issue for me is whether the courts, which are a safe but slow moving venue, are a better way to handle frozen funding than a government shutdown, which is dramatic and thus more satisfying for most activists, but also quite dangerous politically for Democrats and more generally for the rest of the country.
What methods do you recommend to U.S. citizens of less-than-wealthy means to counter the autocracy-promoting uber-rich individuals and corporations who now control many of the actions of Congress, own substantial interests in our country's media, and have the leverage provided by the Citizens United decision?
(Chris) Most of the grassroots actions that any citizen can take do not require a donation. These include contacting your elected officials, posting content on social media, staying informed on current events, discussing politics with your acquaintances, attending political meetings and rallies, volunteering to help candidates or causes, and writing letters or postcards to help turn out voters. Learning more about the world, how the economy works, about history, and our political system are also all extremely important and can be accomplished with very little financial investment.
If you wanted to do even more—like become a supervolunteer or a content creator—you can do it without a financial investment (as long as you are retired). I outlined these in my article, “If You Want to Do More, Here Are Four Paths You Can Take.” Effective political activism at the grassroots level mostly takes time, and not money. This is one of the reasons why grassroots political activists tend to skew older.
I post and repost a lot of anti-Trump, anti-Republican articles and information I find on Facebook, usually redirecting it to my friends and occasionally to the public. I worry this will get me a visit from masked ICE agents and sent to El Salvador! I'm a US Citizen born in Detroit, 88 years old.
(Chris) That seems extremely unlikely to me. The Trump administration has been targeting higher-profile, non-citizen participants in the college campus protests of 2024, rather than random, octogenarian Facebook posters born in the United States. This is intentional on their part.
It is important that you continue to post your desired content on Facebook, or at least that you don’t stop out of fear out of government retaliation. (If you wish to stop for some other reason, that's fine. I quit Facebook years ago for other reasons.) However, if the actions the Trump administration has taken to target critics and dissidents cause you to change your behavior, then those actions will have achieved their intended goal of intimidation.
One of the most important things you can do right now is not to curtail your dissent out of fear of retaliation. Please consider reading my article, “The Two Essential Strategies to Reducing Trump's Power,” especially the second part, where I discuss this in more detail.
Are you seeing any substantial signs that the once Grand Ol’ Party at the national level is realizing the destruction Trump is wreaking on the nation, and whether they're willing to take action?
(Matt) Do they see the destruction? Yes—many do. Are they willing to take action? Not yet. Leaving aside those who are on board and applaud what Trump is doing, there are plenty of Republicans who understand the peril they are creating but—as Lisa Murkowski told a constituent in a moment of candor—they’re afraid of him. The best way to change that is to put Republicans in political peril—which we can do by crushing the midterms. That means winning a large House majority, taking back the Senate, and winning state offices in every region of the country. Republicans would realize that MAGA is not the meal ticket it once was, and that attaching themselves to Trump risks political oblivion in 2028. Given how rapidly Trump has lost the country, coupled with his inability to change course, this is a real possibility. But Democrats and progressive groups have to work to make it happen.
Are there any potential Democratic candidates who could win the presidency AND turn things around? Is there anything we can be doing now to start the process?
Why aren’t we hearing from our Democratic leadership presenting the best plans for the future AND loudly speaking out in rebuttal to all the law-breaking antics of the Trump administration?
(Matt) These two questions are related, so I will try to answer them together. I believe a leader will surface when the time comes. If you take the perspective that moments create leaders, then we are living at a time that is ripe for the emergence of someone to carry us past the tragedies of MAGA governance and rebuild our democracy for the twenty-first century.
I know it can be frustrating to be leaderless at this moment, but that is a function of being out of power and not having a national platform. I do think that congressional Democrats could speak out more on a daily basis to counter the words and actions emanating from the administration, and we are starting to see a more aggressive posture (the above example of Gavin Newsom’s response to the Texas gerrymander is a good example). But even that is different than having a single national leader advocating a clear alternative to Trump.
We will have a voice and a platform once we have a nominee-apparent for the 2028 presidential election. Before that, we will have an opportunity to debate future plans as the candidates jockey for position. We are likely to hear a range of ideas as the candidates look to distinguish themselves from one another, including aggressive proposals that wouldn’t have survived previous primary contests. If the party base responds enthusiastically to a bold vision articulated by an exciting candidate (and I suspect that’s where the base will land after everything we’re going through), expect the candidate advocating it to catch fire and rise above the rest of the field.
I can’t say who that might be because I don’t know. Nobody does. It could be someone unexpected—someone who doesn’t have a particularly high profile right now. Lincoln wasn’t the favorite going into the 1860 Republican Convention, and the patrician FDR was an unlikely choice to create a social welfare state. I expect it to be that kind of election, where whoever takes the baton can ask for a mandate, win the presidency, and do the arduous work of turning things around.